Tag: Lizzie Lynn Lee

What I Read Last Week

Posted June 9, 2014 by Tracy in Features | 0 Comments

Hi folks,

I hope you had a good week. It was a week of lows and highs in our family. On Wednesday we had my father-in-laws service which was very sad. It was a very nice service however, and I think he would have liked all of the wonderful things people said about him.

Then just yesterday my girls played in church. They have been practicing Firework by Katy Perry for the past 4 months with the “adult” choir (I say “adult” but there are quite a few teens in it as well) and they finally got to perform it. They. Totally. Rocked. Seriously. I was just so proud of not only my two girls but the whole group.

The Youth Ringers also played Blessed Assurance yesterday. I’m not normally a fan of that song but I liked this arrangement.

FYI: My giveaway of Parts I & II of The Kraken King by Meljean Brook is still going until midnight on the 11th. You can enter here.

ALSO – Sandy James is giving away a 1 Kindle and 3 ebook copies of her book The Bottom Line. This runs until the evening of the 10th I believe. You can enter here.

So on to what I read last week:

I started off the week with Devil of the Highlands by Lynsay Sands (if you haven’t noticed I’ve been working my way through her historicals lately). As I was reading I thought to myself …wow, this sounds like another book I read once. Uh, yeah, it was the same book and I had completely forgotten that I’d read it. lol Anyway, despite it being a reread I had forgotten enough of it to make it worth reading. The story is about a woman who is placed in an arranged marriage to a man who supposedly/possibly killed 3 members of his family. She really liked the guy and wants to make the marriage work but he doesn’t know how to communicate – even when someone starts trying to kill her off. It was a little bit of a mystery and a fun romance. 3.5 out of 5

Next was Burn for Me by Cynthia Eden. This is the story of Eve Bradley who is a freelance journalist who wants to bring down a project that is supposedly recruiting paranormals for testing when they’re really kidnapping the subjects. Eve meets Subject Thirteen who is really Cain O’Connor and it turns out that he’s a phoenix who can’t die. Well, there is one way, but no one can stand the fire long enough to get the job done. Eve tries to save all of the subjects, especially Cain as she feels an undeniable attraction to the man, but things don’t work out like she thought they would. The story has Cain and Eve running from the bad guys, getting caught, getting free a couple of times and that was a bit repetitive, but for the most part it was a good story. I like Cain and Eve together even though it certainly wasn’t a sweet tender type romance – and certainly not traditional. 4 out of 5

Backwoods by Jill Sorenson is book four in the Aftershock series. This book has Abby and Nathan’s story. Overall I liked the book but I did have a couple of issues with it. I’ll post my review this week.

Next was Mended by Kim Karr. The first two books in the Connections series gave us River and Dahlia. Now we have Xander who is River’s brother and Ivy who he is reunited with. They were together in high school and now 12 years later they are reunited with each other but there’s some major stuff to work through before they can be together. The story was good in parts and then other parts I wasn’t so fond of. I’ll post my review this week.

The Switch by Lynsay Sands was next. This is the story of twin sisters – one who is posing as a boy – who are trying to get away from their uncle who is trying to marry them off to horrible men. They escape and try to head to their maternal uncle’s house but are assisted by a man who ends up screwing up their plan. They end up in London under his protection posing as his relatives. Radcliffe is confused because he seems to be attracted to the boy, Charlie, but then sometimes he’s attracted to Beth. Turns out that Charlie poses as both Beth and herself and that’s what’s confusing him. The girls attempt to find husbands but Charlie wants Radcliffe. They’re also fighting a blackmailer who could ruin everything for them. This was a really cute story. It got a bit convoluted at times but overall a good read. 3.5 out of 5

Last for the week was a novella called Her Dragon Billionaire by Lizzie Lynn Lee. The story is about a woman who is in the witness protection program but is found and almost killed by the Russian mafia (who she testified against). She is found by Liam who is a billionaire and a dragon shifter. He immediately decides to save her life by bonding with her with his dragon blood. When she awakens she has no memory other than her name and he tells her that they’re married cuz he wants to keep her. She does ridiculous amnesiac stuff (but I probably would have too if the guy didn’t tell me the whole truth) and gets caught by the mafia again. The story had too many ins and outs to be as short as it was. It hinted at stuff that I wanted more info on and never got and it was a little too insta-love for me. Is there variations on insta-love? After reading this I think there are. In the end it was just an ok read. 2 out of 5

My Book Binge reviews that have posted recently:
What Happens in Ireland by Whitney K-E
Reckless by Jessi Gage
Love and Shenanigans by Zara Keane
Dark Heat: The Dark Kings Stories by Donna Grant

Happy Reading!

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Tagged: Cynthia Eden, Family, Jill Sorenson, Kim Karr, Lizzie Lynn Lee, Lynsay Sands

What I Read Last Week

Posted July 11, 2011 by Tracy in Features | 9 Comments

Here we are again! It doesn’t seem possible that a whole week has gone by since I wrote last Monday’s post. Time flies when you’re old! lol

I was totally correct last week – getting up early is killing me! lol It’s definitely not easy getting up early in the morning and it’s really hard to go to bed so much earlier than I normally do just so I can get a decent amount of sleep. Luckily this is only for 3 more weeks. What doesn’t kill us makes us stronger, right? Please say right. lol

This past weekend the fam and I headed down to San Diego to see my sister who was down there for work. We ended up going to the Birch Aquarium in La Jolla and then having a picnic in Balboa Park in SD. The aquarium was small but there was a lot of interesting things for the kids to do and we had a lot of fun. The park was beautiful and the it wore the kids out so that was nice. lol

Here are a few pictures:


The view from the aquarium

My sister

My fam, my niece, her boyfriend and his kids

Checking out the tide pools

My reading wasn’t squashed as much as I thought it would be this past week. I did read shorter books in between the longer ones which was nice.

First up was Brightest Kind of Darkness by PT Michelle. This was a YA novel that I really loved. You can read my review here. 4.5 out of 5

Next up was book 2 in the Lessons in Love trilogy by Suzanne Enoch called London’s Perfect Scoundrel. This was Evelyn’s book and it was great! Evelyn decides that she’s going to volunteer some time at an orphanage that she passes all the time. But she finds that she must past muster with the Board of Trustees before she can do anything and that’s where she runs into the Marquis St. Aubyn. St. Aubyn is a rake and a scoundrel and no one that a proper lady should be associated with. St. Aubyn decides he wants to bed Evelyn but he gets much more than he bargained for when he decides to pursue her. This was a great book. Once I picked it up I had a very hard time putting it down. I loved that we got such a great deal of page time with St. Aubyn as I just loved his character. I did have a little bit of an issue with Evelyn’s family. She was seen as a total dimwit by her family but she was really pretty smart. I just couldn’t understand how they could view here that way – just because she went along with what they said all the time. That was just a little niggle and didn’t effect my overall enjoyment of the book. I can’t wait to read the next book. 5 out of 5

Next up was Muffled Drum by Erastes. This was the story of two men who fall in love and are almost torn apart by a case of amnesia. Good stuff. 4 out of 5 You can read my review here.

Next was Sympathy by Jordan Castillo Price. While delivering plants to a house in his neighborhood that always scared the bejeezers out of him as a kid Tony meets David, the new owner of the house. The story was of David and Tony getting to know each other and the strange connection David had with Tony. Good story. 3.5 out of 5

Addicted to You by Bethany Kane was my next read . This is an erotic romance but there was a great story involved here that I really liked. Katie heads to southern Illinois to try and help her friend Rill. Rill’s wife had died two years before and Rill had ended up drinking himself silly in a small town. Katie and Rill end up in bed together but during that time the two find out quite a bit about themselves. I liked the characters in this one a lot and loved seeing each of them grown during the story. 4 out of 5

Next was a short called Jennifer’s Lion by Lizzie Lynn Lee. The story was that a woman is drugged dumped in the Savannah by her so-called fiancé so that he can collect the insurance money. But Jennifer is found by a shape-shifting lion clan who takes her in. Of course the alpha wants to claim her and they’re having sex not an hour after she wakes up from certain death. I didn’t care for the story much at all – the instant sex was off-putting and there was no real depth to it at all. Then I got to the epilogue where the man goes down on the woman in his lion form – Oh heeeeeelll no. I didn’t bother reading further even though there were only 2 pages or so left. Not my cuppa, thank you. 1 out of 5

Slings & Arrows by Josh Lanyon was another short I read. This was about a college student who has a crush on one of his teacher’s assistants, Walter. He likes Walter but the pair is awkward around each other. It was very sweet and I really loved how the pair came together despite their huge communication issues. 4 out of 5

Last for the week was A Lady’s Lesson in Scandal by Meredith Duran. This was an unusual historical romance. Nell grew up in one of the worst parts of London. She finds out from her mother, right before her mother dies, that she is the daughter of an Earl. She thinks she’s a bastard daughter and goes to kill the man when she asks for money and is ignored. She finds out that not only is her father dead but she’s not the bastard daughter – she is the missing daughter who was kidnapped when she was 6 years old. The current earl wants to turn her into a lady so that she can be recognized as who she truly is as well as get the money that is due her and that they will split. Simon marries Nell but originally plans to annul the marriage if she isn’t recognized as the long lost daughter. The pair end up falling in love, but there are many people who get in their way of happiness, including themselves. A really good book that has Duran’s typical wonderful writing. The book almost had a kind of Pygmalion feel to it but it was so much more. 4.25 out of 5

My Book Binge reviews that posted last week:

Magic Slays by Ilona Andrews

Happy Reading!